He never did say. Sela did not ask.
41
“You have the look of a woman with a thousand miseries.”
The voice interrupted the mire of her thoughts as she stared into the mysterious depths of the mug before her.
Sela did not look up. “Get a lot of dates with that one?”
“You tell me.” Jon slid into the booth across from her.
Her position in the tavern was tactically sound. Back to the wall. Facing the door. All of the similar spots were occupied in this place. Everyone here watched the door. It was that kind of place. Hands nervously flitted to side arms when there were disruptions in the roar and flow of the atmospheric din.
Business was slow. The gaming tables were not even in play. A crime boss had cut off the Hedalian port in retribution against some rebellious clan of Zenti pirates. Sela cared little for the details. It simply meant that this place was comparatively peaceful. And everyone here had other things to worry about.
“It’s been ten days, Ty. Hard time finding you.”
“Found me.”
The truth was: she wanted to be found. She had finally decided earlier that day. It had been easy to elude him, Sela recalled with a stubborn sense of pride. She knew he would not depart and would, with matching stubbornness, seek her out. He was bound to her as much as she was to him. A bond held them in each other’s orbit, like two damned stars, destined to eventually decay into each other and bring everything in the space around them to a crushing end.
“Sela.” His voice was quiet, pleading.
She finally looked at him and the rusty hook in her heart turned. Jon was clean-shaven once more. His thick dark hair was neatly groomed. His broad shoulders were squared beneath the sharp lines of a jacket in good repair. Once more he was her perfect Eugenes captain.
But that was never the truth, was it?
“You wanted some space… some time to think,” he prodded. “So let’s hear it.”
She could tell that he was steeling himself, waiting for her to say something damaging and permanent. Is that what he thinks of me?
“There’s no place for me,” she said. “I don’t know where I belong.”
The ghost of his infamous lopsided grin surfaced. “Could say the same of me.”
“You had a life before…all of this. Before the Regime. I didn’t. I know only one way to look at the Worlds.”
“I’ve never believed that about you. Not for a second.”
He leaned across the table. His hand rested over hers. She stiffened, fearful that he would say those strained words again. Three little words like overburdened ships cursed to flounder. He had not said them again since that day on Tasemar. That was eternities ago.
“What now, cap’n?”
“You tell me, Ty. Your choice.”
Across the marred surface of the table, she studied him. There was fear in not knowing what came next. There was undeniable love for this man. It was such a costly vulnerability. Daily, these thoughts warred like ancient gods from the old stories. She watched as a mere mortal, with everything to win or lose.
Sela rose. The table wobbled on its uneven legs as she slid out of the booth. She allowed her hand to trail down his arm.
At the doorway, she stopped and drew in a long steady breath. Looking back over her shoulder, she waited for him to follow her out into the eye-watering brilliance of the world beyond.
She could imagine no other Path.
Excerpt from the second book in this exciting series:
ALLIES AND ENEMIES: ROGUES
By Amy J. Murphy
Chapter 1
Lingering and invasive, the rough hands moved over her body.
Time was playing tricks. It felt like this should be in the interior of the medical suite. Lieutenant Maynard had come to do his gloating. There was not the familiar pressure of metal table at her back. A deep, straining ache gnawed at her shoulders and neck. The the smells were wrong. No sharp anesthetics. This place reeked of sweat and rust. The air was too warm and humid.
Erelah experimentally opened her eyes and lifted her head. From high overhead, harsh white light stabbed into her skull. She squeezed her eyes shut defensively. The hands tugged at the fasteners of her flight suit.
“I wouldn’t do that, Spivey. Jin-ji claimed her—”
“Well, Korbyn ain’t here. Is he? Just shut up an’ watch the door.”
Commonspeak. Thick, plodding accents.
Erelah pried opened her eyes to see the menacing grin of a heavily-tattooed Zenti.
“Wakin’ up there, lovely?”
With a gasp, she tried to pull away. Panic swelled like an eager rushing tide. Her body was hanging, suspended by her bound wrists. Her hands had gone numb, the circulation cut off by the tight bonds.
No. This was not one of the hateful medical labs aboard the giant Ravstar carrier, Questic, nor was it her brother’s ancient Cassandra vessel.
I should be dead. Why am I not dead?
That was the plan.
“Who says Asher always gets the pretty meat?” Spivey licked his lips. His flat yellow gaze studied her. His thick fingers brushed over her cheek.
Suddenly, like a reflex, she bit down on his hand.
Spivey squealed, jumping away. “Bitch bit me!”
Laughter and jeers rang out from the darkness.
The taste of his blood was revolting. She spat onto the deck.
He glared. Cradling his hand, he disappeared from her field of vision. Something heavy collided with her side, enough to knock the wind out of her.
He had kicked her, she realized. There was another ripple of laughter from the occupants of the room’s dim corners. The space echoed: large, like a hangar or a cargo hold.
She sincerely hoped that this was a nightmare. Again, icy panic rushed in. On top of it, something else asserted itself, like a wall:
Feel that fear? It’s fuel. Use it. That pain? The pain is good. It means you’re still alive, still in the fight.
Not me. That voice isn’t mine. The memory isn’t mine. It belonged to a Regime soldier named Tyron, a woman who very likely would have wished her great personal harm.
Could Tyron be here as well? And Jon?
Remember. Think!
The last thing she remembered was the cockpit of the Jocosta. The fiery azure lights of the singularity. A diving plunge into oblivion to take out the Questic, to end Defensor Tristic’s relentless pursuit of her, to end Tristic.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be anywhere.
Did I fail?
She tried to get her feet under her to take her weight. It alleviated the pressure in her arms and shoulders. The deck plates transmitted a vibration that suggested powerful engines beneath her bare feet.
My boots. Why would anyone take my boots?
Erelah blinked out into the darkness beyond the white circle of light. Beyond its reach, huddled shapes shifted.
Six? Perhaps more? All sounded male.
Zenti. The one, Spivey, was a Zenti. His broad features etched with heavy black-and-red clan tattoos.
Their race knew no love for the Regime, having been forced to cower in the remote systems. Erelah’s panic spiked as she realized who they must be. They addressed each other as clan members. It meant only one thing: pirates.
Spivey lunged at her from the huddle of dark shapes. Fury compressed his brute features.
“Spivey! Back off! I said no one touches her! She’s mine!”
The sharp command was given by a deep resonant voice from somewhere behind her. It raised a fragmented memory of that same voice, commanding and insistent, trying to rouse her.
The acrid smell of ozone and seared wires. Smoke cloying her lungs. The voice barking more orders, the sounds of others nearby. Powerless, she felt her body lifted, haphazard and limp. A broad shoulder dug into her stomach with each plodding step. The pronouncement in Commonspeak: She’ll live. Being flopped gracelessly on the deck.
The voice belonged t
o Korbyn. Their jin-ji. Captain.
More shouts and hails from the men in the shadows. Their mood seemed celebratory, in a menacing sort of way.
Spivey shrank. “Jin-ji. I check on her for you.”
“Right,” came the reply, completely unconvinced. “Don’t ‘member ordering that.”
“Wake now. You see. Got lots of fight in ‘er.” Spivey was backing away now, tucking his bitten hand behind his back.
“Give me the room, brothers.”
More sniggering and sounds of roughhousing as their shadows dispersed.
The room quieted, then:
“Spivey!”
The Zenti stopped in his tracks for the door. His shoulders shrank together.
“Yes, jin-ji?”
“That’s once I caught you,” Korbyn warned.
“Right,” Spivey muttered, by way of admission of guilt. Then as an afterthought, “Amends, jin-ji.” A door slammed shut.
After that, the only sounds were the purposeful slow thud of Korbyn’s boots on grating and the creak of leather somewhere in the darkness behind her.
“You’re very lucky that I found you.”
He was much closer than she expected him to be, his voice mere inches from her back.
“Your stryker… something nasty took a swipe at it. Sturdy ship to keep you alive.” His voice circled to her left, just outside of the baleful light that bore down from above.
Jocosta. Her heart bounced. But she said nothing, spine stiffening. If the vessel were nearby and still intact, then there was a chance to—
“Oh, escape, she thinks,” he mocked.
Korbyn stepped into the light. He was tall and muscular, his shaven head inked with clan markings. Not Zenti, but Eugenes. Almost handsome, he possessed brutally cunning eyes. He studied her, but not with the same animal want as Spivey.
“You’re not a breeder,” he said. “Too scrawny. Wrong color eyes.” It was a pronouncement, evaluation.
He leaned into her neck, inhaling. “Not a Tech. Too tall. Wrong smell.”
His voice seemed to feign a shared secret, intimating. But she did not shrink away. Erelah knew this play from Maynard, her former jailer. Korbyn’s menace was pale in comparison to the brand offered by that monster. Somehow she sensed this jin-ji was more concerned with appearances. He was testing her.
“You got a name, girl?”
“What is this?” she rasped in Commonspeak. “What do you want?”
Internally, she cringed at the sound of her own voice. Erelah had never developed much of a knack for the brutish language. It sounded just as it was: a high born attempting to speak the language of the gutter.
Korbyn laughed.
“Her majesty stoops to use Commonspeak.” He said this in High Eugenes. But his pronunciation was awkward, as if it were rusted from disuse. “Good. Now, does she have a name?”
Erelah said nothing, regretting her mistake of speaking. She had already revealed too much. The lazy intellect generally assigned men of Korbyn’s musculature was misapplied here. He was quite observant and might prove too clever to outwit.
“Maybe we’ll stick to Regimental. Common ground,” he continued, switching languages easily.
Perhaps he thought he had a wealthy lost Kindred in his possession and was already guessing at what her ransom would pay. Oh, was he in for a bitter surprise. There was no grieving great house left to pay for her safe return. The man who raised her, Helio Veradis, a man she called “Uncle”, was long dead, the last member of a lineage that had once wielded influence. In fact, Defensor Tristic was the only party that would likely pay for her and would only bring Korbyn and his men grim death—if they were lucky.
“Hmm… green eyes. Nice.” He tilted his head. “Rare color for a Eugenes. Brought some embarrassment, I’m sure. Not the purest line. Maybe a little back-birth world, way out in the raggedly bits from Origin. Some peasant Kindred. Or maybe a Last Daughter they couldn’t marry off.”
He slid one of her sleeves down. “No bonding brands on your arms. So they shipped you off to Fleet then? And now look at you… all the way out in my little corner of the black, all lost like.”
She looked away, swallowing. A chance encounter with this man and he struck closer to the truth than anyone would have guessed. Uncle had altered Erelah and her brother in many ways, but eye color had been the least of his concerns. His main objective had been to skew their genetics in order to hide their true nature as a Human and not Eugenes. As a child, she had begged Uncle to have her eyes fixed. But child, he would say, smiling down at her, there is nothing broken.
“That it?” Korbyn pouted in mock sympathy. “Would the grand matron of your Kindred even pay to get you back?”
He reached out to touch her chin. She jerked back, fearful of what visions his touch would bring to her mind.
“Don’t,” she hissed. “Please don’t.”
He snorted. Undaunted, he played with the unraveling plait of her hair. He leaned closer still. “I ain’t got the rot, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
She could try to use the Sight on him, and get him to free her. It had worked with Maynard. But to do that, she needed his touch, and she didn’t know if she had the strength for that.
Everything felt so heavy, as if the a-grav were doubled. Her very spine felt brittle with fatigue. Using the Sight meant feeling herself fall away and slipping under his skin. It meant becoming him, if only for a brief moment. Each time she used the Sight she left a little bit of herself behind.
Too weak. I couldn’t withstand it.
“Just don’t touch me,” she said in Regimental.
“I can’t touch the lady. Too nice for Asher Korbyn.” He mimicked a Eugenes accent. “Got news for you, sister. You’re far gone from Origin. This place eats everything. Even lost little girls like you. Right now I’m the closest thing you got to a friend out here, sweetling.”
“Here? Where’s here?”
Korbyn reached above her, his face looming closer. She shrank back. There was a clank of something metallic and the tension on her restraints lessened.
“You really don’t know. Do you?” There was an incongruous flicker of something in his deep maroon gaze. She might have mistaken it for pity.
Maroon, like a Binait skin slave’s. Far from a pure bred Eugenes himself.
Although her wrists were still bound, she could now lower her arms. She gasped at the relief in her shoulders. Her legs felt so weak. She staggered and almost fell.
He gripped her arm, steadying her.
“Look.” She licked her lips. “Just let me go. This is—”
“This is business.” His arrogance reappeared like a shield. “Sorry. Nothing personal.”
Eyes narrowed, he met her gaze. “Trouble. I can see that from where I stand. That’s all I need to know. I don’t want to hear your story, little girl. The Reaches are full of little tragedies like yours.”
The Reaches.
A bleak hopelessness spread through her. She had somehow ended up here, on the other side of the Known Worlds from where she’d last been conscious: the dead station and her attempt to destroy the Questic.
How could that even be?
Then I am truly lost.
She allowed herself to sag.
“So that leads us back to where we started. Your name.”
Erelah was suddenly exhausted beyond caring. Her body ached and trembled, bones hurting as if they had been ground to mulch. Even if she could find a means to get away, how could she navigate out of the Reaches?
Perhaps I am not meant to.
He dipped his chin to peer into her face. “All I’m asking for is a name. Just your name.”
“Tilley,” she croaked, eyes downcast. “My name’s Tilley…Valen.”
The lie bubbled out of her, unbidden, a spark of self-preservation that Erelah would hesitate to credit to herself. It was the Tyron-voice again.
For a judging silence, she watched the thick fingers on his right hand play an
impatient staccato against his thigh, where the bone hilt of a curved blade rested.
“I doubt it,” he said, straightening. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a bad liar?”
“Actually yes,” she rasped.
He clamped a chummy hand down on her shoulder. “Guess I have to call you something.”
He pulled her forward and looped his arm under hers as her legs attempted to fold. She felt herself righted as if she weighed nothing.
“Easy,” he said in a rough whisper. “Word of advice… Tilley. You don’t want to look weak in front of my crewies. Makes my job harder to keep them off you.”
Erelah pulled away.
What sort of game was he playing?
Perhaps he guessed her thoughts. He shrugged. “Just evening the odds. Come on.” He jerked his chin.
She wobbled along, her movements made awkward by her bound arms and bare feet. The smooth deck plates underfoot transitioned to toothed metal grating that chewed her feet.
“Why’d you take my boots?”
“Trel fancied ‘em.”
She frowned up at him.
“What? Would you preferred he taken something else?”
She looked away, realizing his meaning. “No.”
They entered a corridor made narrow by stacks of haphazardly piled crates with markings that suggested all manner of origins. Only one or two held writing she could decipher. She tried her best to remember their route as they moved through the ship. That Tyron-voice told her to count doorways, look for landmarks. But she still felt dazed and quickly lost count.
At another intersection, they passed a torn-out panel. Three Zenti huddled around it, dodging showers of sparks as they worked. They looked up at her, eyes hungry. Self-consciously she drew herself up, trying to straighten her shoulders and thrust up her chin. Act as if they weren’t there. Beneath her. Despite her pretense, she felt the unease coil around her stomach. Korbyn’s massive hand on her upper arm tightened, nearly pulling her off her feet.
“Don’t get any ideas.” His tone was coarse, surly. Something about it seemed exaggerated to her. “I know you’re counting steps, doorways.”
Allies and Enemies: Fallen Page 31
